The Goob

2014

Walpole’s unaffectedly gangly, disarming performance keeps “The Goob” on an even keel, though it’s Harris’ name and stark, singular presence that might lure distributors, particularly in the immediate wake of the actor’s celebrated, BAFTA-winning work in TV’s “Southcliffe.” Myhill and casting director Kharmel Cochrane are to be commended for consolidating the film’s strong sense of local color by constructing the film’s ensemble almost entirely from native Norfolk actors.

A youthful summery vibe - smoking weed, swimming in the river, having a party in the pumpkin fields, pretending to be squirrels behind the back of psycho stepdad Sean Harris - but there's also something hushed about it (the electronic score helps), set in the kind of rural shithole one associates with Bruno Dumont films (these people are such English rednecks, they even go drag-car racing).

Filmed on location entirely in rural Norfolk, The Goob ostensibly borrows heavily from the Andrea Arnold school of contemporary working class miserablism. Stylistically and tonally, however, it blends the codeine reverie of Harmony Korine’s Gummo with the cold-shower realism of early Ken Loach, although perhaps the film it best evokes is Shane Meadows’ 1999 drama, A Room for Romeo¬ Brass.

Dropping the viewer straight into the action without clunky exposition, the film delivers a vivid slice of the life centering on the Goob (Liam Walpole), as he's called by his family, a lanky teenager whose summer is stained by the omnipresent shadow of his mother's violent, womanizing sociopath of a live-in boyfriend, Womak (Sean Harris).